Ten nations confirm what your government hoped you'd never find out.

By Our Security Correspondent · 01 May 2026 · China Watch

They came for your router first. You didn’t notice because your Netflix still worked.

That was the plan.

A joint advisory issued this week by the FBI, the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, and agencies from eight further nations confirms that Chinese state-linked hackers have silently conscripted more than 200,000 Western household devices into an invisible military force operating behind your television, inside your walls, and almost certainly within arm’s reach of where you are sitting right now.

Your router. Your smart television. Your doorbell camera. Your children’s talking rabbit. All of them. Soldiers.

The operation is called Raptor Train. It is run by a group known as Flax Typhoon, which sounds like a disappointing herbal tea but is in fact a unit of contractors working directly for China’s Ministry of State Security. They did not ask your permission. They did not need to. You bought a router made in Shenzhen, you failed to update the firmware, and now a man in an unmarked building in a city whose name you cannot pronounce has access to your home network, your browsing history, and a great deal of patience.

He is not in a hurry. That is what makes it worse.

NCSC chief Richard Horne revealed that Britain is experiencing four nationally significant cyberattacks every week. He said the solution was to ask AI companies for help. This is the equivalent of discovering someone has been tunnelling under your house for three years and responding by ordering a better doorbell.

The Chinese foreign ministry did not respond to requests for comment. In six years of covering Chinese state operations, they never have. We include this detail every time. We believe it is the most important sentence in every article we publish.

Security researchers found the average home router contains 32 security vulnerabilities. The FCC has moved to ban foreign-made routers from US networks. British shops continue to sell them.

We draw no conclusions. We never draw conclusions. We simply report what is happening and allow the conclusions to arrive on their own.

Check your router. Update your firmware. Ask yourself who made your kettle.

We told you. We’re telling you again.